Converting old beta tape into dvd?

lucky1 · #1 (**permalink**) 11-03-2006, 02:50 AM

1st post! Doing some closet cleaning a while back, I found an old beta tape of Bear Bryants last football game (liberty bowl. Alabama vs Illinois)(tape is 24yrs old). Checking it out on an old beta machine that a friend gave me, to my suprise, the video was still pretty good. The rewind don't work so I'm having to mechanically rewind it (spade bit and cordless drill).
I want to convert this to dvd in studio 10 but I'm afraid 10 won't handle the length ~2hrs without crashing. I have moviebox plus usb and I was wondering if I would have less problems if I hooked the moviebox to the pc with firewire instead of usb (if it can be done).
If this configuration don't work, what other alternative do I have?
If I could ever get it captured, I could use shrink to get it on to 1 dvd, or try dl or 2 dvds. Any suggestions on how to save this collectors item?

miwhel · #2 (**permalink**) 11-03-2006, 05:49 PM

You should easily get this on 1 DVD.

Give movie box a go, if it fails to capture the entire length then capture in 20/30min sections and stitch back together on the timeline.

Nikosony · #3 (**permalink**) 11-04-2006, 10:40 PM

What kind of connections does the beta video deck have in terms of video and audio out? And also what are the connections on the moviebox plus usb. Generally speaking it is better to use a Firewire connection but if USB is all you have, you'll have to use that instead. What is the spec of your computer system, and yes as the other contributor says you will get the 2 hours on a disc but you will have to use slightly more compression that normal and so picture quality will suffer. And only capture 20 to 30 minutes at a time. An alternative would be to connect the beta up to a DVD recorder that is assuming you don't want to do any editing of the material. Just stick a blank DVD-R or DVD+R into it and copy from the beta deck to the DVD recorder. Click through the recording settings and find one near to 120 minutes to cover the two hours.

lucky1 · #4 (**permalink**) 11-05-2006, 01:58 AM

Nikosony: thanks: The betamax has vid.in/out, aud.in/out (mono). The moviebox + has video in, aud. r&l, SVHS, & firewire in. Has the same for the outlet except it is usb instead of firewire. The supplied cable from the box to pc has a small male on one end (4pin usb) & a bigger flat usb on the other (both have the usb symbol). Is it possible to find a cable with a small usb male on one end and a firewire 6pin male on the other? Is there an adaptor for this?

My DV camera is a Canon Optura 200 & the manual (Canon) says that I can pass the signal from the Beta through the camera to the Movie box. This should give the Movie Box a digital signal ?

I have a Dell 8200 pentium 4, 1.8gig with 1gig of ram; 200+80 gig HD; Wind. XP home, & NVIDIA Ge Force FX 5500 display adaptor.
Since my first post, I have ordered a RCA dual dvd recorder w/Divx, HDMI & HD upconversion (refurbished). This sounds good but have since found out that this recorder is a piece of junk (according to reviews).
Anyhow, I'll figure something out one way or onother. Thanks for all the help.

miwhel · #5 (**permalink**) 11-05-2006, 05:58 PM

Originally Posted by lucky1

My DV camera is a Canon Optura 200 & the manual (Canon) says that I can pass the signal from the Beta through the camera to the Movie box. This should give the Movie Box a digital signal ?

This changes things entirely. You have the capability to convert the analogue to digital via firewire. If the manual says that the camera has pass through then you can connect the player to the camera using Svideo or composite plus audio using the AV cable that came with the camera then connect the camera via firewire to the computer. Next put the camera in to playback mode and go in to the menu and choose AV-DV and set to ON this will be in VCR setup or something similar. Open win MM or whatever software you want to use and choose capture, press play on the beta player and the camera will convert the beta signal in to DV on the fly and then pass it through the firewire to the pc as DV AVI ready for editing or straight conversion to DVD.

This method means you can forget about the movie box completely.

lucky1 · #6 (**permalink**) 11-07-2006, 02:21 AM

miwhel: I finally captured the video. The only way I got it to work was to hook up a firewire cable out of the camera to my pc. For some reason it only captured part of the audio but I can redo until I get it. Studio 9 worked: 10 wouldn't work and Win. MM kept locking up. Thanks all.